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138 Were still to be gone through that she might win Persuasion of her strength and of herself To be what she could see that she must be, No matter where the ghost was.—And the more She lived, the more she came to recognize That something out of her thrilled ignorance Was luminously, proudly being born, And thereby proving, thought by forward thought The prowess of its image; and she learned At length to look right on to the long days Before her without fearing. She could watch The coming course of them as if they were No more than birds, that slowly, silently, And irretrievably should wing themselves Uncounted out of sight. And when he came Again she should be free—she would be free. Else, when he looked at her she must look down, Defeated, and malignly dispossessed Of what was hers to prove and in the proving Wisely to consecrate. And if the plague Of that perverse defeat should come to be— If at that sickening end she were to find Herself to be the same poor prisoner That he had found at first—then she must lose All sight and sound of him, she must abjure All possible thought of him; for he would go